


My love, tattooed permanently on you

by Analinea



Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [4]
Category: Charlie's Angels (2019)
Genre: F/F, Hallucinations, Happy Ending, Isolation, OT3 yay, Sabina whump, Solitary Confinement, Whumptober 2020, abandoned, hurt with a dash of comfort at the end, psychological whump I suppose, the themes were, where did everybody go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26892913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Analinea/pseuds/Analinea
Summary: “I’m a liar,” she states, “I’ve always been a liar. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me,” she whispers. She receives no answer.
Relationships: Elena Houghlin/Jane Kano/Sabina Wilson
Series: Be still, my whumper's heart [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947337
Comments: 7
Kudos: 42
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	My love, tattooed permanently on you

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, the title comes from the song My Love by Until the Ribbon Breaks, go listen to it it's good!
> 
> Second of all, I did research on solitary confinement, it's a horrible thing...that said, even if I used a research paper based on interviews with prisonners, I don't know if the way I depict Sabina's experience is completely accurate. Creative licence, let's say.
> 
> Anyway! Enjoy <3

Sabina has been trained from birth. She has been an idea all her life, not a  _ someone _ , nothing more than a concept. 

“Why did you call me Sabina?” she asked her mother when she was a child, tiny and not aware yet of the constricting of expectations on her life. Oh, she felt it. She just didn’t know what it was yet, or that kids weren’t supposed to feel this way.

“Well I found out about my pregnancy around the time your father was negotiating the deal with the Italians investors, dear. They really appreciated it.”

_ It’s wrong _ , she thought as she went to write it down, as she thought about reading this story in front of the whole class.

_ It’s wrong _ , she thought, as her classmates told stories of loved grandmothers and life-changing works of art. 

_ It’s wrong _ , as she stood up and read the lie she came up with out loud; Sabina learned to love herself as she learned to love her name. With fiction.

_ Who am I _ , Sabina wonders on the third day. She keeps counting the hours, even the lost ones. It doesn’t keep her sane, but it’s something to cling to. 

She needs to, because everything else seems to– melt away. Ice cream walls drip-dripping down and pooling at her feet, ever darkening the cell; if she goes blind she won’t be able to tell what day it is anymore.

She looks at the lake made of walls rippling at her bare feet from where she’s sitting, legs extended, in one corner of her cell. There’s a blood stain on the cuff of her torn up jeans; she has no idea where it comes from. There’s no mark on her. The stain wasn’t there last time she looked. It stays.

Maybe– she shakes her head hard enough for her brain to hit the inside of its cage, for her back to hit the inside of the cell;  _ no, no, nope _ , it’s the third day. She didn’t lose time.

Everything is fading to black.

Then comes the rain. 

_ I’m an Angel, yes, with a capital A _ , she thinks on the fourth day, hands clamped on her ears because it just doesn’t stop. The rain didn’t stop; each drop drills through her skull, millions of needles burying under her skin and no matter what she does the noise doesn’t go away. 

Metal screeching locks every muscle in her body. Feeding time used to be a relief from the gnawing hunger, now she only wishes she could escape from her own body so she didn't have to smell the food.

_ I’m an Angel from– from the agency...the?  _ What’s the name of it? 

“You’re a liar.” 

“What?” Sabina, voice half gone, is jolted out of her attempts to bury herself inside of her own mind; she’s been trained for this but there was a red mention in her file about weaknesses and then she was trained some more for this but there was the mission. The– the mission with. The device thing that stopped brains. Sabina’s shaking hands grip at her hair as if she could pull out the memories from neat drawers. The mission with Elena and Jane; that, she can still say. Their names. Elena and Jane, she repeats.

“She won’t say anything but shit,” drifts from behind the cell door, each word to the rhythm of booted steps. “She’s a liar.”

“Hey!” Sabina yells, up on one leg, two legs, back to one leg because the walls aren’t content to just drip now they have to bend to make her lose balance. She scrambles up, heart burning from an anger she forgot she was capable of, hits the door, “Hey! Who’s talking? Let me out of here! Hey!”

Nothing but echoes as answer. They were just on the other side of the door, vanished now. Just to piss her off. 

Sabina can’t breathe. She blinks, sitting in the corner legs extended, absently considering the way the tray next to the door keeps shrinking. 

She’s thirsty, she thinks, clicking her tongue. Reaches with her hand but the distance between her and the plastic cup stretches and her eyes are stuck on her bloody knuckles.

When did that happen? 

This is the fourth day, right?

“Why didn’t you tell us?” the whisper comes from the darkest corner, opposite Sabina. 

“I was scared,” she answers without a sound. She lost her voice, too. It’s buried under her ribs, smothered by the violent beating of her heart that gives her no rest. “Is this why you left me?”

There’s nothing but the melting of the world to answer. And a scream, far away. Maybe they’re coming for her next, and they’re doing this to scare her.

“I’m not scared!” she screams, up in the middle of the room, fists marking her palms with crimson half-moons of pain. She has to show them that, as she’s sure they’re watching. She feels the touch of their eyes on her skin. She’s not afraid of them, no. There’s nothing else to fear now that she’s been abandoned because of who she is. 

A simple story. A lie. 

_ I’m Sabina _ , she thinks,  _ it was the name of my mom’s favorite aunt. She was a doctor, and she saved people. I was premature, and she saved my life, too _ . Is that a lie? She’s not sure. 

“Oh, are you Italian?”

“No, I– Maybe…” 

Food comes; she can’t even look at it for fear of burning her throat with bile. She turns away in her corner. It’s day? Five. Five? The food keeps appearing with a scream. The food keeps watching her. 

Water rushes through pipes, frustrated and wrathful, scraping Sabina from the outside in. 

_ I’m an angel _ , she believes. Her family had been catholic, and she remembers the collection of tiny angels on the fake mantlepiece of her bedroom. She sat amongst them, unmoving, well-behaved. 

She looks at the ray of light that cuts through her retina, illuminating a patch of grey floor lively-upped by red feathers. Her back hurts. The dark corner of her cell tells her it’s because she fell hard from the sky for her lie. No one wants her now that she’s stained with dishonesty.

Something feels wrong about that statement, but her skull is so full of water she has a hard time moving in it. “Elena and Jane wouldn’t have left me,” she finally manages to say. She’s not an angel, she’s an Angel, she’s been taken, it’s been five days –six?– and they’re coming to get her back. She surrounds the certainty of having been abandoned with belief that they’re looking for her.

Everything –she’s been trained for it, she knows– is a result of the isolation. “You’re not real,” she concludes to prove to the dark corner that she has no reason to listen to it. 

“Oh, no, you’ve got it backwards.  _ You _ are the hallucination, sweetheart.” 

Sabina blinks. The cell has tipped over, wall to ceiling, ceiling to wall, wall to floor, floor to wall. It’s funny how easily things can change. It makes her laugh.

“Shut up!” a voice bangs on her door, “Or you’re next!” 

Let them come, she thinks, she’s stronger than them. She’s stronger than her uncooperating bones. She can’t really move. “That’s when they’ll come”, the logical Sabina that has been trained for this whispers next to her. “When you’re broken.”

“I’m not broken,” she protests, “I’m just taking a nap.”

“Whatever you want to believe, dude.”

She closes her eyes to make her point. 

“Sabina?” 

Uh-uh, she won’t be fooled into opening her eyes. She can’t anyway, but that’s not something the voice needs to know. 

“Sabina, can you hear me?” 

Yeah, it’s obvious isn’t it? That said, it sounds desperately like Elena. And Sabina hasn’t seen Elena in  _ so. Long _ . Has it been years already? 

Alright, she’ll make the effort. She’ll unpeel her eyes no matter the heaviness of the lids on them. She’ll be disappointed. Elena isn’t here. Only the dark corner, keeping watch over her. 

“Sabina, please! I don’t think she can hear me,” Elena sounds scared.

“Have you tried turning it off and on?” Sabina asks, because that’s usually why things aren’t working. 

“Oh my god, you’re here,” Elena sobs, “are you alright?”

Sabina blinks slowly. “But you’re not.” She buries her face in her shoulder; she’s sure once she stops looking the room stops spinning. 

“Honey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. The subdermal– the coms were damaged. And then they took you too far away. Sabina, we found you! We’re coming! Tell me you’re alright!”

“Where’s Jane, then?” 

“Her–” Elena stammers, voice a sharp edge of worry, “she was– her coms don’t work.”

Sabina hums. She’s not sure what that means. She’s pretty sure Jane talked to her lately, but she can’t exactly say what about. 

“We’re close. Yeah you’re right– hey Sabina? Keep talking to me alright? Are you bleeding from somewhere?”

Sabina clicks her tongue, pouting. She’s done with socializing with the voices in her head, actually. Plus, she’s not sure where she could be bleeding from since she’s turned to rock. Fused with the ground-turned-wall of her cell. Statues don’t bleed. 

“What?” Elena says. “She’s talking about statues, I don’t– Sabina? Sabina, we’re close to the building now. I have to stop talking to you for a bit but I’m not leaving, okay? Keep talking to me.”

Elena, real or not, has never been someone Sabina could say no to. She would give the sky to her if she asked. She says as much. And then she thinks Jane will feel left out; she considers her options, something as good as the sky. “To Jane I’d give...I’d give...the ocean.” There. That’s a classic pair, isn’t it? 

Sabina can almost see it, when she blinks. The walls have melted enough for the stars to shine through, and to reflect on the pool that formed at the center of the cell. Elena, and Jane. 

She repeats their names. 

“We have the same tattoo,” Sabina chuckles, it’s so funny, “isn’t that something couples do? It’s so weird, we did it in reverse.” She sobers up. “Wait, does that mean we’re supposed to be a couple with all the Angels?” 

She considers it. Loses the thread of it. “It ties us up,” she rambles instead, “tattoos, coms, love, sky, oceans,” she continues the list until she’s not sure what the words mean.

“I’m a liar,” she states, “I’ve always been a liar. I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me,” she whispers. She receives no answer. 

Her eyes are drip-dripping down her cheeks, it’s so strange she touches it to taste it. It’s salty. Oh, she’s crying. 

It hurts. As much as it hurts when the door screeches open –Sabina puts her hands on her ears– when the light gains the intensity of twelve suns combined –she curls up, eyes clenched shut– when fireworks explode –gunshots she fears.

A hand on her shoulder makes her jump back but she hits the wall and it takes her breath away.

“I’m sorry,” the dark corner says in Elena’s voice. Sabina cries, but opens her eyes through the agony. “I’m sorry, we’re here, we’re not leaving you, I’m sorry.” Ah, no, it’s Elena. It  _ is _ Elena.

Sabina grips her wrist so hard she feels the bones shifting but Elena keeps apologizing. “You’re here, you’re here,” Sabina hears herself saying in between the letters of each “I’m sorry,” that reach her back.

“I love you, I’m sorry,” they echo each other. 

Then there’s a silence, footsteps, knees hitting the ground. “Shit, Sabina, oh my god, I’m sorry,” and a hand bandaged to the wrist touching her head, crimson feather light. “I love you, I’m so sorry.”

They stay like that for a time Sabina can’t count. She can’t count any more hours. But when she looks around, the dark corner is just a corner. The walls are walls. Everything scrapes her raw from the outside in, still. But the lies have stopped.

“Sabina.” Her name sounds like a prayer in Elena’s mouth.

“Sabina.” Her name sounds like an answer in Jane’s.

“I love you,” she tells them. It’s not a lie.

That’s who she is.

**Author's Note:**

> If you want an additional bit of info: I read somewhere that being completely isolated could make it seem like less time has passed than it actually did, but that's when you don't have day/night so I'm not sure it applies here. 
> 
> **Comment, kudos, and love are my OT3 *sparkle hands***
> 
> I'm on [that one site with a lot of gifs](https://kinsbournescream.tumblr.com/tagged/ana-writes-sometimes)


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